I agree that after watching her last two matches, I see NOTHING remarkable about Azarenka’s game. It’s eerie how similar the stats in both matches were. As I mentioned before, Maria had 44 winners to Vika’s 19. Yesterday, Serena also had 44 winners and Vika had a paltry 13. But Maria did have the 42 unforced errors to Vika’s 19. Serena had a whopping 45 unforced errors and Azarenka finished with 28. Maria had 8 aces to Vika’s zero. Serena had 13 aces to Vika’s zero again. 10 DFs hurt Maria and even Serena had 5, which is a ton for her. Azarenka had 5 DFs and 4 DFs in the semis and final.
So you look at these numbers and you have to say that Vika was thoroughly dominated and pushed around. What she does do well is move around and not beat herself for the most part. And she has a good return game. She was reading Serena’s serves well. But, to me, Azarenka is basically a Wozniacki with more power. Just like Caroline, her serve is extremely weak and attackable. She IS capable of generating winners off the ground, so I don’t want to completely say she’s in puff-baller Caroline’s category. But in these two matches, her strategy was, for the most part, to keep the ball in play until Maria and Serena made an error, just like Caroline or Radwanska or even Kerber. And it worked against Maria and was 2 points from it working against Serena. You shake your head about how she nearly pulled it off despite getting manhandled.
But you did see the stark difference between Serena and Maria. When Serena absolutely had to hold serve and get a break or two, she got them to comeback and win. When Maria had to hold, she couldn’t. And she did nothing against Vika’s weak serve in the 3rd and you could tell Maria was disgusted about that, in her press conference.
Big picture, I see no reason why Maria can’t turn her rivalry against Azarenka around. She has the game and the weapons. She just needs to play smarter in the big points because Vika has proven to be mentally tough. Maria needs to go out there and take it. Play with confidence and SERVE BETTER. There was no killer instinct from Maria in that 3rd and it cost her. Hopefully, she’ll learn from this.
